J.B.S. Haldane, scientist extraordinaire—born in Britain yet spiritually bound to India—remains one of the most enigmatic geniuses of the modern era. Here is a man who saw action in two world wars, engaged in the most radical politics of his day, conducted groundbreaking scientific research, and wrote with flair and conviction—yet Haldane’s universe remains shrouded in mystery. Award-winning author Samanth Subramanian’s latest offering undoes this travesty. Besides shedding light on Haldane’s contributions to genetics and evolutionary biology—he was the first to calculate the rate at which mutations occur and accumulate in genes—the book illuminates Haldane’s inner world—his towering intellect, his radical vision of society, his provocative philosophy, and his attempts a wrestling with the essential moral questions that scientific progress must raise. Equally, the book dwells on Haldane’s years in India—his journey to the nation; his affiliation with the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta; his attachment to the Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Bhubaneshwar (where he died). Dronamraju’s description of Haldane as ‘the last man who knew everything’ was, at its simplest, an acknowledgement of his command over multiple subjects. But it was also an astute observation that Haldane’s era was the last time when the realms of scientific knowledge were limited enough for a single person to apprehend in near-entirety. To know everything was to see the forces of the world unified and to conceive of life in its full complexity. A Dominant Character will give readers a taste of that heady sensation.

One of the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2020 One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020 A biography of J. B. S. Haldane, the brilliant and eccentric British scientist whose innovative predictions inspired Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. J. B. S. Haldane’s life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama—from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him “the last man who might know all there was to be known.” He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during the Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and he gave speeches in town halls and on the radio—all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically, Haldane believed, and he sought not simply to tell his readers what to think but to show them how to think. Beautifully written and richly detailed, Samanth Subramanian’s A Dominant Character recounts Haldane’s boisterous life and examines the questions he raised about the intersections of genetics and politics—questions that resonate even more urgently today.

Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, Southwest Review, and Publishers Weekly "[The stories] are short, but their mood and imagery are lasting, and reflective of brutal truths of the commerce of human civilization . . . chilling, finely tuned pieces on power and survival." --Los Angeles Times A collection of innovative and ambitious short stories from a visionary young literary artist In The Dominant Animal—Kathryn Scanlan’s adventurous, unsettling debut collection—compression is key. Sentences have been relentlessly trimmed, tuned, and teased for maximum impact, and a ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress. The nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet. The clay head of a man is bought and displayed as a trophy. Interior life manifests on the physical plane, where characters—human and animal—eat and breathe, provoke and injure one another. With exquisite control, Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence—and also from deliberate and generative ambiguity to shocking, revelatory exactitude. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. How often the conclusions open—rather than tie—up. How they twist alertly. No mercy, a character says—and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.

"In 1843, the Victorian political theorist John Stuart Mill outlined a new science, "the science of the formation of character." Although Mill's proposal failed as scientific practice, S. Pearl Brilmyer shows that it survived in the work of Victorian novelists, who cultivated a narrative science of human nature. Brilmyer explores this characterological project in the work of such novelists as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner. Bringing to life Mill's unrealized dream of a science of character, Victorian realists used fiction to investigate the nature of embodied experience, how traits and behaviors in human and nonhuman organisms emerge and develop, and how aesthetic features-shapes, colors, and gestures-come to take on cultural meaning through certain categories, such as race and sex. In the hands of these authors, Brilmyer argues, literature became a science, not in the sense that its claims were falsifiable or even systematically articulated, but in its commitment to uncovering, through a fictional staging of realistic events, the universal laws governing human life. The Science of Character offers brilliant insights into important novels of the period, including Eliot's Middlemarch, and a fuller picture of English realism during the crucial span between 1870 and 1920"--

The Death of Character is a broad historical, sociological, and cultural inquiry into the moral life and moral education of young Americans based upon a huge empirical study of the children themselves. The children's thoughts and concerns-expressed here in their own words-shed a whole new light on what we can expect from moral education. Targeting new theories of education and the prominence of psychology over moral instruction, Hunter analyzes the making of a new cultural narcissism.

Gabrielle Hyde is bright, beautiful, and feisty, with a brilliant future ahead of her and an even darker past to overcome. Damian Hunt, CEO of Hunt Industries INC., is tormented by his inner demons, shattered past, and need to control. When Elle falls into Hunt's life, their need to be possessed by the other takes hold, beginning the young couple's roller coaster affair. Damian becomes obsessed by Elle, his need to dominate her, and his ability to give her what she deserves...Possibilities. When their pasts decide to make themselves present, Elle starts to wonder if she could ever truly give in to such...A DOMINANT MAN

I’m hopeless with men. I attract all the wrong ones, and my landlord is top of the list. I need a job, and fast, but instead I’m in the back of a perfect stranger’s car, letting him do things to me that I’ve only dreamed of... Caden isn’t used to meeting beautiful women on the street. As an attractive billionaire, he’s even less used to them running away. But then his mystery woman shows up as his new assistant, and he’s going to punish her for disappearing on him. A punishment which soon morphs into something else altogether. Keeley can’t believe her luck. Her new job comes with some...orgasmic perks, but Caden Fox is renowned for having a short attention span, especially when it comes to companionship. Does she dare trust him with her heart, as well as her body, or will her fears and his rivals’ machinations tear them apart forever?